Sunday, April 17, 2011

Interviewer: With all the potential terrains you could have chosen for your home, including some lush terrains of California and the northern states, what drew you to the bleak, precipitous mesas and buttes of the Southwest?

Wile E. Coyote: The Roadrunner.

Interviewer: And your goal right now?

Wile E. Coyote: The Roadrunner.

Interviewer: Do you see any parallels between yourself and Captain Ahab?

Wile E. Coyote: Gotta go after the Roadrunner.

Interviewer: Do you see any similarity between your life and the plight of Sisyphus?

Wile E. Coyote: Sisyphus didn't have the Roadrunner.

Interviewer: Do you have any sympathy for Brer Fox and his attempts to interdict Brer Rabbit?

Wile E. Coyote: Fuck no. Rabbits are a dime a dozen. Particularly right after Easter.

Interviewer: You use a number of imaginative devices from Acme Products. Have you considered using other implements to help you trap the Roadrunner?

Wile E. Coyote: Like you want me to switch to Amazon? Maybe Zappos? It's the way things are written. I want to use devices, I order from Acme. No hassle. No credit checks. No problems with returns.

Interviewer: Isn't that something on the order of a country store mentality?

Wile E. Coyote: Wall-Mart isn't country store? Listen, I'm way out here in the boonies, miles from home. No Famous Nathans. No Zabars. No Junior's cheese cake. No Carnegie Tea Room. No Barney's. No kids on bikes, delivering Chinese. No New York Times; I got to settle for the damned Arizona Republic, follow the Mets on ESPN. You get a goal in life, you take what comes with the territory. Listen, you think Krazy Kat had it so hot, all this distance from home, not a decent deli in sight?

Interviewer: How do you cope with the humiliation?

Wile E. Coyote: You ever read The Bhagavad-Gita? Talks about one's dharma, one's destiny. You got a duty, you do it. No step aside, here that fucker comes.

Preface

These are notes, arguments, and attempts to resolve any lingering indecision about works in progress, things I have observed, books and stories I have read, things I wish I had done, and things I wish I had not done. They are in effect the kinds of notes I put in bottles at the beach as a kid, but this time the hoped for reader is the me of the future, browsing here for the energy and vision that got these notes down in the first place.